Project milestones

July: UCR presented a proposal requesting $7 million to plan for a $150 million multidisciplinary research building.

September: The Board of Regents Committee on Grounds and Buildings approved the $7 million request. Full board approval is expected Thursday, Sept. 17.

May: UCR officials will request approval to proceed with construction on the building.

UC Riverside will spend nearly $7 million on plans for a $150 million research building, part of an expansion strategy designed to turn the campus into a national model for academic excellence.

On Tuesday, Sept. 15, members of the University of California Board of Regents’ committee on grounds and buildings, meeting at UC Irvine, voted unanimously to green light spending the $7 million. The full Board of Regents is expected to OK the request Thursday, Sept. 17.

The preliminary planning is the first step in building the proposed Multidisciplinary Research Building 1 on the north side of campus. The building would include both wet and dry laboratories, enclosed environmental space for plants and animals, as well as room for offices.

The labs would be built so they’re useful to researchers from multiple disciplines. The goal is to foster crossover and collaborative research.

UCR Chancellor Kim Wilcox told the board that the building would provide research facilities for about 50 of the 300 additional faculty members he has pledged to hire by 2020. Those faculty would have their own research groups. As many as 400 people would use the new building. Wilcox said the addition will also boost the campus’ profile.

The research lab is the first of three buildings that Wilcox has proposed constructing in the next several years, and is part of a comprehensive plan to expand the campus. Prior to the vote on funding for the research building, he shared his strategy for that growth.

Wilcox presented one assessment of the UCR's impact that showed the school’s researchers are 26th in the world when measured on the number of research papers published in the journals Science and Nature per capita. At the same time, he said, the school’s faculty-to-student ratio is 1-to-29, compared with the 1-to-23 UC average.

“We simply don't have enough people,” Wilcox said. “We’re very good, but we’re too small. Our goal is to transform UCR to become a national model for academic excellence.”

UCR officials also are planning for the eventual construction of a second multidisciplinary research building and an engineering building. Together, the three new buildings would house 130 faculty members. The added lab space would allow UCR to reach the average per capita research space for UC campuses as a whole.

Wilcox told the regents that UCR is using other means to create more space for its faculty and researchers. Most -- 33 percent he said -- will be accomplished through better utilization of existing space. Renovation of older buildings and leasing off-campus space, will also be part of the mix.

Much of that renovation is underway, Wilcox said. The lab is the first step in new construction.

“This is the first big development piece,” he said, following the meeting.

The building will be situated north of the campus’ engineering buildings. The second multidisciplinary lab will probably be constructed in an area to the southeast that is now home to greenhouses, some of which may be moved to the agricultural area on the other side of Interstate 215, Wilcox said. There are no clear plans for where the Engineering building would go.

The chancellor also said he would like to build a new student health center, most likely in the area near the UCR Extension building.

Funding for the new lab building will come from federal research grants. Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Paul D’Anieri said that about 50 percent of money from federal research grants can be spent for laboratory overhead. Wilcox likened the strategy to the gambling term “betting on the come,” since the money was not in hand.

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